Constitutional Law

Substantive Due Process and Unenumerated

Posted on November 11, 2009
Substantive Due Process and Unenumerated Rights: confronted with the Janus-face of the current Court, what's a student to due -- er, do?A student asks:In Con Law II class, I tried at the beginning of class to very poorly state an argument on why an incestuous Plaintiff ][i...

"Come to think of it, draft cards

Posted on October 29, 2009
"Come to think of it, draft cards aren't persons either." -- John Hart Ely.Win.

Lawsuit Fail. (H/t: Above the

Posted on October 27, 2009
Lawsuit Fail. (H/t: Above the Law)

It's great to be a cause-oriented

Posted on October 14, 2009
It's great to be a cause-oriented lawyer, but don't be this type.

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Frakk'n Nebbia. If that rapacious

Posted on October 13, 2009
Frakk'n Nebbia. If that rapacious milk price-fixing scheme didn't violate the Due Process Clause (and it probably didn't -- let's talk about P/I later), then it violated the Equal Protection Clause as blatant class legislation. I'll even entertain a motion that it violated the Titles of Nobility Clause...

Prof. Paul Robinson, U. Penn Law

Posted on September 23, 2009
Prof. Paul Robinson, U. Penn Law School:The rules of international law governing the use of force by victims of aggression are embarrassingly unjust and would never be tolerated by any domestic criminal law system. They give the advantage to unlawful aggressors and thereby undermine international justice, security and stability...

Go put My Friend Vinnie in the

Posted on September 18, 2009
Go put My Friend Vinnie in the Netflix queue: Politico explains; Above the Law comments

"Where the rights of others are

Posted on September 13, 2009
"Where the rights of others are not involved, however," writes Prof. Michael McConnell is his great article in 103 Harv.L.Rev., describing the view of free exercise of religion taken in the early state constitutions, "the free exercise right prevails...

I'm re-reading Gonzales v. O Centro

Posted on September 11, 2009
I'm re-reading Gonzales v. O Centro and appreciating for the first time the Court's sense of irony. "Oh yes, Congress, first you enacted broad Controlled Substance Act exemptions for Native Americans, then you enacted freakin' RFRA -- and *now* you want us to go all neutral-and-generally-applicable...

Ronald Dworkin on Justice Sotomayor

Posted on September 09, 2009
Ronald Dworkin on Justice Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings (one of his frequent New York Review of Books screeds -- this magazine publishes excellent essays, plus many by Prof. Dworkin):She demonstrated her clarity and technical skill in correcting several senators' misunderstandings of constitutional issues and explaining the facts of a large number of her own lower court and recent

EDWARD KENNEDY: American GracchusThe

Posted on August 26, 2009
EDWARD KENNEDY: American GracchusThe Roman Republic lasted for about 400 years, with an unsystematic, jerry-rigged constitution, resting on a foundation of political tradition, by which I mean a well-known but not externally enforceable rules about what one simply did or did not do in politics...

Prof. Colin Miller, of John Marshall

Posted on August 19, 2009
Prof. Colin Miller, of John Marshall Law School (Chicago) and EvidenceProfBlog, maintains a list of blogging law professors. This splendid service may be accessed as follows, alphabetized by law-school affiliation: A-M, and N-Z.

Robert Novak, RIP. A master of

Posted on August 18, 2009
Robert Novak, RIP. A master of finding things out that people didn't want him to know. A Washington insider who always related the "inside baseball" to issues that mattered to everybody. And a convert to Catholicism.

Conan O'Brien sez:Sonia Sotomayor

Posted on August 11, 2009
Conan O'Brien sez:Sonia Sotomayor is now a Supreme Court Justice. Now that she has joined the Court, one third of the Justices are now from New York City. This explains why the customary opening of a Court session has changed from "All rise" to "Hey ? I?m judgin? over here!?

I'm about to set out to teach a

Posted on July 13, 2009
I'm about to set out to teach a nine-session unit on Comparative Constitutional Law in our summer program in Strasbourg, France. I expect I will be able to update this blog from there, but if I do, it is more likely to be with reflections on that course and on my travels than on the Sotomayor hearings or the Court's end-of-term cases...

Did Sotomayor violate a well-established

Posted on July 07, 2009
Did Sotomayor violate a well-established bar rule in calling her solo practice in 1983-6 "Sotomayor & Associates" when evidence suggests it was just herself helping family and friends via a home practice? Nothing wrong with a home-based solo practice, but apparently it's a rule agreed-upon by all state bars that a lawyer may not imply that he/she has other lawyers working with him/her when he/she

Well, as a colleague and supporter

Posted on June 25, 2009
Well, as a colleague and supporter of the American Center for Law and Justice, I probably shouldn't say much about today's decision concerning the 4th Amendment and school "strip searches"; nor about my doubts about expanding an already unwieldy rule-of-reason (really, rule-of-what-we-like-or-don't-like) 4th Am regime; nor about my firm agreement with Prof...

Northwest Austin: ThomasManiaAfter

Posted on June 22, 2009
Northwest Austin: ThomasManiaAfter today's Northwest Austin decision on the constitutionality of the Sec. 5 of the Voting Right's Act under the enforcement provision of the 15th Amendment -- or rather, not on the constitutionality of the Sec. 5 of the Voting Right's Act under the enforcement provision of the 15th Amendment, since the Court decided 8-1 to shrink from going there -- I open Blogger

A Talmudic maxim instructs with

Posted on June 08, 2009
A Talmudic maxim instructs with respect to the Scripture: ?Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.? The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboth, Ch. V, Mishnah 22 (I. Epstein ed. 1935). Divinely inspired text may contain the answers to all earthly questions, but the Due Process Clause most assuredly does not...

This would be huge it were a Republican

Posted on June 05, 2009
This would be huge it were a Republican administration and nominee -- not the memo itself, which is defensible and is counterbalanced by other items in the nominee's record, but holding it back, regardless of who precisely was responsible for that. "Clerical error," yeah right.

Sotomayor v. Darlingsweety. Advantage:

Posted on May 28, 2009
Sotomayor v. Darlingsweety. Advantage: Sotomayor.While much of the right gears up against Judge Sotomayor, I myself (am I a little corner of "the right"? I blog: you decide) keep finding reasons to find her a remarkably friendly nominee, considering the President whose constitutional job it is to choose the Justice this time around...

A remarkable piece of New York

Posted on May 27, 2009
A remarkable piece of New York Times-NARAL teamwork"Abortions rights backers," the moribund paper of record would have us believe, are experiencing "unease" about Judge Sotomayor. She might even, they allegedly fear, be that fifth vote to strike down Roe...

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League

Posted on May 26, 2009
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights makes a point: assuming that Judge Sotomayor, as a New York Puerto Rican, has a background (at least) as a Catholic, then her confirmation would give use a 2/3 RC Court! There was a certain amount of caterwauling about this factor when it was Roberts and Alito, but nothing so far this time, while the Court's supposed "Catholic

New bloglinks: Redeeming Law, by

Posted on May 20, 2009
New bloglinks: Redeeming Law, by colleague Mike Schutt, and (related) Cross & Gavel Resources Blog.

Day after Notre Dame speech, Obama

Posted on May 18, 2009
Day after Notre Dame speech, Obama interviews prominent pro-abortion Catholic, MI Gov. Jennifer Granholm, at White House. For SCOTUS slot, some think.Fwiw, I think David Lat makes a good predictive case for Judge Diana Wood. Whether she would be a "WW III" pick is another question...

Did I just refer to Kathleen "Sibelius"

Posted on May 01, 2009
Did I just refer to Kathleen "Sibelius" in the post below? Ach, musical me. I meant "Sebelius," of course.

Justice Scalia, asked for comment

Posted on April 29, 2009
Justice Scalia, asked for comment by Above the Law's David Lat:It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment...

Thoughtcrime by legal analysisVery

Posted on April 21, 2009
Thoughtcrime by legal analysisVery oily: first, send out Rahm Emanuel to say, no, prosecuting ex-DOJ officials for the legal memos they wrote is a bad idea. Then, say well maybe we'll do it after all, but it's up to the AG, and maybe Congress will want to do a bunch of stuff here, but we're not sure yet...

SOUTER TO RESIGN IN JUNE? The re-launched

Posted on April 20, 2009
SOUTER TO RESIGN IN JUNE? The re-launched Underneath their Robes details the grounds for speculation.

Stephen Colbert skewers a liberal

Posted on April 14, 2009
Stephen Colbert skewers a liberal Biblical critic. (Hat tip: Mark Shea)

AP Exclusive: Dolan to fight anti-Catholic

Posted on April 13, 2009
AP Exclusive: Dolan to fight anti-Catholic bias By RACHEL ZOLL ? 3 hours ago NEW YORK (AP) ? The incoming archbishop of New York says he will challenge any suggestion that Roman Catholics are unenlightened because they oppose gay marriage and abortion...

National Review: The Future of

Posted on April 09, 2009
National Review: The Future of Marriage

Iowa? Vermont?First, if you haven't

Posted on April 08, 2009
Iowa? Vermont?First, if you haven't already, read Eugene Volokh's post about slippery slopes, inspired by the Iowa decision. Some slopes are slippery, others aren't. This one is, regardless of past outrage by editorialists and gay activists over the other side's "absurd" slippery-slope arguments...

Iowa Supreme Court: state's EP

Posted on April 03, 2009
Iowa Supreme Court: state's EP clause requires same-sex marriage. Next: Prairie Prop 8?

How long will the "pro-choice"

Posted on November 18, 2008
How long will the "pro-choice" movement continue to use that name, when its latest initiative is to deny to objecting doctors, pharmacists, etc., any choice as to whether to take part in abortions or not? The latest administrative battle over this issue is reported, with biases all in place, here...

David Lat nails it: "New Haven

Posted on November 13, 2008
David Lat nails it: "New Haven and judicial fiat. Some things just belong together."

The headline news not in the headlines:California

Posted on November 05, 2008
The headline news not in the headlines:California voters approve Proposition 8, overturning state Supreme Court decision that created same-sex marriage.

A Facebook group for us conservative

Posted on November 02, 2008
A Facebook group for us conservative Yalies: Coastal Elites for Sarah Palin!

Let me see if I can figure out

Posted on November 01, 2008
Let me see if I can figure out this Liddy Dole "Godless" ad thing. It says here:Dole's 30-second advertisement shows clips of some members of an atheist advocacy group -- the Godless Americans Political Action Committee -- talking about some of their goals, such as taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and removing "In God We Trust" from U...

Here is a guest column that ran

Posted on October 27, 2008
Here is a guest column that ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer.Here is a story on the even-faster-than-expected circulation decline of American newspapers. Here is a list where you can find the Philly Inq's place within the sinkhole.I link, you correlate.

Prof. Kmiec: a parting of the waysFormer

Posted on October 15, 2008
Prof. Kmiec: a parting of the waysFormer students have been asking me about my continuing allegiance, vel non, to Prof. Douglas Kmiec's con law casebook (co-edited with Dean Eastman and Profs. Presser and Marcin), given -- Prof. Kmiec's sudden turn toward Obama advocacy, you were thinking? Shoot, man, con law casebook editors as a class think Daily Kos is a news site...

Oh, just remembered -- I promised

Posted on October 14, 2008
Oh, just remembered -- I promised I'd report about the McCain-Palin rally down here in Virginia Beach, and whether anything went on there, from either side, that portended an impending police state or rule by political militias (left or right: there are political militias of the left as well as of the right, and they can get pretty frisky too, as people found out in Madrid in the early- to mid-1930s...

"Coming Obama Thugocracy?" Michael

Posted on October 11, 2008
"Coming Obama Thugocracy?" Michael Barone pulls together a number of data points about initiatives from the Obama campaign and elsewhere that are, to say the least, First-Amendment-insensitive.EDITED TO ADD: Is there a new sort of "angry Right" that supplies some sort of counterpoise? Perhaps I'll be in more of a position to tell you after I attend the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia Beach on Monday.

Connecticut joins the same-sex

Posted on October 10, 2008
Connecticut joins the same-sex marriage bandwagon, in what is fast emerging as the time-honored way: by a 1-vote margin of on a state supreme court.In that bizarre state where most Republicans are liberal and most conservatives are Democrats, Republican Governor Jodi Rell says, well, that's it -- but Democratic House Speaker Jim Amann says the legislature will act...

The Court's refusal to reconsider

Posted on October 08, 2008
The Court's refusal to reconsider Kennedy v. Louisiana in light of the overlooked death penalty for rape in the UCMJ could be seen as part of the Court's overall "the military is different" jurisprudence; cf. Rostker v. Goldberg, Goldman v. Weinberger...

A too-much-overlooked remark by

Posted on September 29, 2008
A too-much-overlooked remark by Justice Frankfurter, perhaps applicable to Boumedienne (on my mind b/c our Law Review here at Regent just had a symposium on that and related issues); concurring in U.S. v. Lovett, Frankfurter wrote:Not to exercise by indirection authority which the Constitution denied to this Court calls for the severest intellectual detachment, and the most alert self-restraint...

Never get in a car with strangers

Posted on September 23, 2008
Never get in a car with strangers who offer you "compelling state interest" tests, I always tell my students. Mr. Compelling State Interest is not your friend.

Major resource discovery: The Alexander

Posted on August 27, 2008
Major resource discovery: The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. See esp. the databases under the tabs "American History" and "Western Civilization" in the left-hand margin.

Calif. S.Ct: under garden-variety

Posted on August 18, 2008
Calif. S.Ct: under garden-variety civil-rights statute -- i.e., of the "you can't bar blacks from your hotel" type -- doctors specializing in fertility treatment must extend treatment to same-sex couples.This news item doesn't refresh the memory as to whether California has a state RFRA, but I'll bet if it does, or gets one, it'll make no difference...

Medellin, continuedFirst, I hope

Posted on August 06, 2008
Medellin, continuedFirst, I hope readers prayed for Medellin last night, and for his victims and their families. I'll continue to do so. I'm Catholic so I get to do that. 2 Maccabees 12:43-46. (Wuzzat? -- What, it's MY fault somebody threw some books out your Bible?)Second, of last night's dissents, only Breyer's was really substantive...

Medellin: I'm monitoring the execution

Posted on August 05, 2008
Medellin: I'm monitoring the execution sitution via Scotublog and Google News. The last-minute argument for delay is non-trivial. As presented by Lyle Denniston:?Texas is about to execute Mr. Medellin anyway, taking the decision out of Congress? hands and placing the United States irrevocably in breach [of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations]...

Colleague Craig Stern on SSRN:

Posted on July 16, 2008
Colleague Craig Stern on SSRN: "The Coherence of Natural Inalienable Rights"

From Heller:In any event, the meaning

Posted on June 29, 2008
From Heller:In any event, the meaning of ?bear arms? that petitioners and Justice Stevens propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby ?bear arms? connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia...

Yowza!

Posted on June 26, 2008
Yowza!

Kennedy v. Louisiana, the child-rape

Posted on June 25, 2008
Kennedy v. Louisiana, the child-rape death-penalty case: It would be hard to deliver a clearer, more workmanlike, here's-why-you're-wrong-any-questions kind of dissent than did Justice Alito today. Justice Scalia would have given off more sparks, but no one could have done a better job putting it down where the horses can get it: first of all, of course very few states adopt the death penalty for child rape -- they were scared by dicta in the Coker v...

I don't know when I'll have a chance

Posted on June 12, 2008
I don't know when I'll have a chance to write something at length on Boumedienne, but:1. It seems we are now the only country in the world that grants habeas corpus to prisoners of war, wherever or under whatever circumstances taken (is Guantanamo today different in any legally relevant sense from Germany during the Bulge?)...

Chuck Dunn on presidential Preacher

Posted on June 03, 2008
Chuck Dunn on presidential Preacher Features: bad for candidates, bad for preachers. Amen.

As many headlines put it, Jim Gilmore

Posted on June 02, 2008
As many headlines put it, Jim Gilmore "ekes out" a win over Bob Marshall in the race for the Va. Republican Senate nomination.That must by why the Gilmore people were running around during the vote going "Eek! Eek! Eek!"Yes, it was much closer than anyone would have expected when pro-life, pro-marriage maverick Marshall announced in January that he was going up against the state GOP establishment with a shoe-string campaign against erstwhile annointee Gilmore...

"The first question is, is there

Posted on May 23, 2008
"The first question is, is there standing?" Not much, by the time I get through with these exams.

Interesting things about Dept.

Posted on May 19, 2008
Interesting things about Dept. of Revenue of Ky. v. Davis:* My friends in the libertarian litigating community took it on the chin: only two Justices -- Kennedy and Alito -- bought into their claim that the Dormant Commerce Clause doctrine is a fountainhead (as it were) of judicial enforcement power for the free market...

Gay marriage has been decreed for

Posted on May 15, 2008
Gay marriage has been decreed for California by its Supreme Court; the decision is here. Highlights I've had time to take in so far:* Sexual orientation is a suspect classification for Equal Protection purposes in California.* Equal benefits are not enough: the word "marriage" has to be thrown in too, otherwise same-sex couples' feelings will be hurt (the technical term for this, "dignity and respect," is borrowed from Dworkin), and this is an unconstitutional injury...

The California Supreme Court will

Posted on May 14, 2008
The California Supreme Court will announce its ruling tomorrow, at 1 pm eastern time, on whether the California Constitution implies a right to same-sex marriage.The recent trend in state courts has been toward recognizing that such a seismic change should be made, if at all, by the people's representatives in the legislatures...

Why you can't support Kant. (Hat-tip:

Posted on May 13, 2008
Why you can't support Kant. (Hat-tip: MDSS)

BLT, the Blog of Legal Times, is

Posted on May 12, 2008
BLT, the Blog of Legal Times, is snarking that Scalia and Garner, by giving a CLE course based on their book, are turning it into "performance art"; BLT's post links to Garner's web site, Law Prose.To which I say: I didn't know Bryan Garner had a web site! Well, now I link to it!

Scalia's C-SPAN interview with

Posted on May 07, 2008
Scalia's C-SPAN interview with Brian LambOn smart young people choosing the legal profession rather than science or the humanities:[I]t is the fact that we devote, in my view, too many of our best and brightest minds to the law. I wouldn?t like to do anything else...

The Scalia-Garner book on app.

Posted on April 29, 2008
The Scalia-Garner book on app. ad. is out!

Prescribing what shall be orthodoxThe

Posted on April 18, 2008
Prescribing what shall be orthodoxThe judge in the Texas polygamist "sect" case has found in favor of continued state custody for the children, at least so far.One remarkable fact is that the finding is based on no proven abuse, but only on the asserted strangeness of the sect's beliefs...

Posted on April 16, 2008

Historical portions of Everson

Posted on April 12, 2008
Historical portions of Everson and Engel = American History in 30 Seconds with Bunnies

From Slate: Scalia on brief-wr

Posted on April 07, 2008
From Slate: Scalia on brief-writing

A post by Jason Wojciechowski about

Posted on April 02, 2008
A post by Jason Wojciechowski about Erie that I might want to come back to later, so I'm posting it here

Here's the passage from the U.S.

Posted on March 28, 2008
Here's the passage from the U.S. v. Ressam oral argument that I was referring to:JUSTICE SCALIA: General, could Congress pass a law that said if you wear a wristwatch during the commission of any crime, you get another 10 years?GENERAL MUKASEY: A statute like that would be entirely unreasonable...

Scalia Criticizes News Media, the

Posted on March 27, 2008
Scalia Criticizes News Media, the news media are reporting (guess who's going to win this round).At a conference of attorneys in Washington, Scalia said news organizations often fail to focus on the text of the laws the court interprets, citing accounts of last month's 8-1 decision that made it harder for consumers to sue makers of federally approved medical devices...

From the Chief's opinion for the

Posted on March 25, 2008
From the Chief's opinion for the Court in Medellin:A non-self-executing treaty, by definition, is one that was ratified with the understanding that it is not to have domestic effect of its own force. That understanding precludes the assertion that Congress has implicitly authorized the President?acting on his own?to achieve precisely the same result...

Not the D.C. v. Heller Oral Argument.

Posted on March 20, 2008
Not the D.C. v. Heller Oral Argument. (Hat-tip: TKB)

The Founders and their agents.

Posted on March 16, 2008
The Founders and their agents. From NRO/rotflmao.

Va. S. Ct. decision striking down

Posted on February 29, 2008
Va. S. Ct. decision striking down regional transportation authorities (Marshall v. NVTA): it's all about --* non-delegation* careful monitoring of the power to tax* democratic accountability, esp. where taxing is concernedGot to L-O-O-O-O-V-E IT!(The other part of the decision -- finding no constitutional flaw re the "single subject rule" -- was also correct and well reasoned: classic Hamiltonian/Marshallian "let the ends be legitimate" kind of thing...

William F. Buckley, Jr., 1925-2008.

Posted on February 28, 2008
William F. Buckley, Jr., 1925-2008. Oh, to be sure, one can complain (one did, in fact) that in his later years he seemed spent more time schmoozing the New York glitterati than manning the conservative barricades. No matter. For three or four generations, he was proof that conservatives could not rightfully be denied a place among those glitterati, if they happened to desire one; that Lionel Trilling (see the linked WSJ editorial) was just dead wrong and behind the times...

Clinton Turns From Anger to Sarcasm.

Posted on February 24, 2008
Clinton Turns From Anger to Sarcasm. Oh that'll work.

Yesterday's electronic edition

Posted on February 22, 2008
Yesterday's electronic edition of London's Daily Telegraph led with "Biggest Brain Drain from UK in 50 Years," ("as highly qualified professionals settle abroad"), and further along ran stories that, though not overtly linked to the first, might help explain it...

Well well -- looks like a good

Posted on February 20, 2008
Well well -- looks like a good day for federal preemption! Must read now -- OM NOM NOM.....

Unless it's whatever they put in

Posted on February 16, 2008
Unless it's whatever they put in the water in California: I trust this is just a ploy to provoke McCain to address Catholic issues more squarely. Otherwise I'll have to conclude that my good friend and sometime mentor Doug Kmiec has gone utterly 'round the bend.

For my (informal) Plato students:

Posted on February 09, 2008
For my (informal) Plato students: Yale's Prof. Steven Smith teaches intro Political Philosophy, incl. The Republic....

Fruits of socialized medicine:

Posted on January 30, 2008
Fruits of socialized medicine: public officials get to decide whether to deny you medical care based on your unhealthy habits, such as smoking, drinking, eating too much -- or getting older.

Our little symposium last month

Posted on January 28, 2008
Our little symposium last month on Standing, mentioned by my bff Jon, here at the Volokh Conspiracy -- many thanks to Prof. Adler for his participation!

In Britain, a court challenge to

Posted on January 23, 2008
In Britain, a court challenge to the potentially sovereignty-ending Lisbon Treaty -- John Gouriet writes:We believe that [U.K. government] ministers are limited by the confines of the Constitution; that they have no authority to surrender, or lend, sovereignty to another power, especially one that is unelected, unaccountable, irremovable and owes no allegiance to the British Crown...

Well, what a long time it's been.

Posted on January 21, 2008
Well, what a long time it's been. The Christmas break wasn't an easy one for me this year. I want to thank my many students and colleagues who helped, and are helping, to make it easier.There's so much to write about; esp. SCOTUS oral arguments that need commenting...

NY Media Exchange Group Blog: Good

Posted on December 24, 2007
NY Media Exchange Group Blog: Good Bye to My Friend Alan Wagner

Alan C. Wagner, 1931-2007

Posted on December 22, 2007
Alan C. Wagner, 1931-2007

The law profs behind the candidates,

Posted on November 30, 2007
The law profs behind the candidates, to the extent the candidates are telling (or the journalists are asking)

Feminist educators openly acknowledge

Posted on November 22, 2007
Feminist educators openly acknowledge differences in our classrooms, but that does not mean we must tolerate all ideas....What happens to the feminist classroom when students challenge feminist principles?

High Court to Hear D.C. Gun Ban

Posted on November 20, 2007
High Court to Hear D.C. Gun Ban Case. Wonder what Justice Kennedy's philosophy of the mystery of life is this year.

Navy says malfunction caused dummy

Posted on November 17, 2007
Navy says malfunction caused dummy bomb to drop. What a relief: here I was afraid a dummy had caused a malfunctioning bomb to drop.But wherein lay the malfunction -- in causing the bomb to drop, or in the bomb being a dummy? I mean, how worried should Virginia Beach be here, you know?

SEATTLE (AP) ? A federal judge

Posted on November 10, 2007
SEATTLE (AP) ? A federal judge has suspended Washington state's requirement that pharmacists sell "morning-after" birth control pills, a victory for druggists who claim their moral objections to the drug are being bulldozed by the government.I'm very happy for the druggists-plaintiffs, but I'm not sure I agree with their attorney who says:"We believe strongly that forcing someone to choose between their religious beliefs and actually losing their business or their career is unconstitutional...

The media are easily ledI haven't

Posted on November 08, 2007
The media are easily ledI haven't picked a new presidential candidate since my man, Sam Brownback, dropped out (I'm not likely to follow his advice and choose McCain: 1st Amendment, you know). I have had doubts all along about Giuliani on judicial nominations, and until this piece appeared on NRO this morning, there was little to allay those doubts...

Southwick confirmed! Ed Whelan

Posted on October 24, 2007
Southwick confirmed! Ed Whelan totes up the heroes, who include Senators Specter and Feinstein.

The suspense is over: Hu-Jintao

Posted on October 22, 2007
The suspense is over: Hu-Jintao Reelected Leader of the Communist Party of China, reports the national daily of Cuba.

THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK -- Got

Posted on October 18, 2007
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK -- Got one! Near the end of his Nebbia dissent, Mr. Justice McReynolds wrote:The somewhat misty suggestion below, that condemnation of the challenged legislation would amount to holding "that the due process clause has left milk producers unprotected from oppression," I assume, was not intended as a material contribution to the discussion upon the merits of the cause...

Obama Reaches Out to Religious

Posted on October 16, 2007
Obama Reaches Out to Religious VotersThe candidate himself wasn't on the bill. But about 50 people showed up to talk about the war, poverty and trying to seize back the moral mantle some in the GOP claim. The night also featured an Obama video and a campaign altar call ? an invitation to become a "congregation contact" and rally support for the candidate...

What Google ads tell us about the

Posted on October 15, 2007
What Google ads tell us about the economics of lawyer advertising. (Hat-tip: Walter K. Olson, who is quoted with, as usual, a fine one-liner.)

More on Gordon Brown's "New" New

Posted on October 12, 2007
More on Gordon Brown's "New" New Labour? Superbugs and "d.i.y." abortion

Blogger Patrick Joubert Conlon

Posted on October 11, 2007
Blogger Patrick Joubert Conlon reviews a book edited by Regent's own Charles W. Dunn. And here's the book!

U.K.: Anti-gay comments could cost

Posted on October 08, 2007
U.K.: Anti-gay comments could cost you seven years in jail

Rep. JoAnn Davis, RIP

Posted on October 06, 2007
Rep. JoAnn Davis, RIP

Drudge dishes on text of Justice

Posted on September 27, 2007
Drudge dishes on text of Justice Thomas's 60 Minutes interview this coming Sunday. On Anita Hill:She did not take slights very kindly and anyone who did anything, she responded very quickly," he says. When Kroft rejoins, "Didn't take 10 years?" Thomas replies, "It didn't take 10 minutes...

Slate reviews the reviews of Toobin's

Posted on September 22, 2007
Slate reviews the reviews of Toobin's the The Nine, including one by my Facebook friend and blogrollee David Lat.

Mukasey nomination: If this were

Posted on September 18, 2007
Mukasey nomination: If this were the start of the administration, I might want someone who doesn't carry the burden of a Nan Aron and a Chuck Schumer recommendation. For a Supreme Court appointment, I certainly would. But for a short seat as AG, I support this nomination -- if only for the way Judge Mukasey once faced down Bill Kunstler:William M...